


Atonement

by persephoneregina



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Crimes & Criminals, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Falling In Love, Florist Seonghwa, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Murder, Mystery, Psychological Trauma, Romance, Writer Hongjoong, past trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:15:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25693396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephoneregina/pseuds/persephoneregina
Summary: Love truly is the most powerful force in the world, the truest form of magic, the utmost miracle, but then again, like any other form of power, love does have its destructive aspects.Seonghwa knew it well.He once fell in love and, much like he did with the flowers of his beautiful garden, he cherished his darling with all of the care he was capable of, giving him everything and more, compelled to do so by the sense of completion that loving someone with such pure devotion can give to a soul.Loving him felt fulfilling, intoxicating, appeasing, and Seonghwa fell for the spell of love.
Relationships: Choi San/Song Mingi, Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my darlings!  
> Here is the prologue of the SeongJoong AU I had promised to write to celebrate Inception's win as a title track.  
> As I said before, the concept will be fairly dark and will involve a lof of mysteries going on and being slowly unveiled, so I hope you will look forward for the events to come and evolve with the plot.
> 
> I hope you will enjoy this short yet, I believe, intense prologue, and if you do please remember to leave kudos and comments down below!
> 
> As always, you can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/persefoneregina)
> 
> Until next time, LOTS OF LOVE!!!

_ Love. _

_ The most celebrated, analyzed, interpreted and discussed feeling in the history of humanity. _

_ The ultimate muse, the origin of life, the secret to immortality, the root of eternity. _

_ In the heart of those who love us, we are bound to live forever, as long as our memory is preserved, as long as our story is being told, as long as there is someone passing on our legacy, as long as we’re not forgotten, as long as the love for us doesn’t, eventually, as it is doomed to happen to every mortal thing, doesn’t run out. _

_ We don’t cease to exist when our life ends.  _

_ We cease to exist when we cease to be loved. _

_ Love truly is the most powerful force in the world, the truest form of magic, the utmost miracle, but then again, like any other form of power, love does have its destructive aspects. _

_ Seonghwa knew it well. _

_ He once fell in love and, much like he did with the flowers of his beautiful garden, he cherished his darling with all of the care he was capable of, giving him everything and more, compelled to do so by the sense of completion that loving someone with such pure devotion can give to a soul. _

_ Loving him felt fulfilling, intoxicating, appeasing, and Seonghwa fell for the spell of love. _

_ He fell so hard that he became blind, too enticed and enamoured to truly figure what his beloved one was doing to him, too innocent to foresee how the man he would have given the world to was exploiting his feelings, how the love he felt was turning into a form of worship that led him to annihilate his needs, his ambitions, his dreams, to only exist in order to be a tool for someone else’s capricious demands. _

_ Eventually, though, when the charm dissolved and the veil was torn, after many years Seonghwa could see, at long last, how far he had gotten down the path of a tainted love, so far he had lost himself in the process. _

_ And when the reality of what a monster he had been unconditionally giving all of himself to hit him, Seonghwa was left in shambles to pick up the pieces of whatever was left of his identity, while the one he called “Love” left for good, leaving him behind without even the forces to pull himself together. _

_ Love is the most powerful force in the world, as we were saying. _

_ And like any other force, it has its downsides. _

_ Its collateral effects. _

_ The harder one loves, the more bitter the aftermath. _

_ But when someone so pure loves with all of his being someone so wicked, there is no way he can predict how miserably things could end for him. _

_ And, in Seonghwa’s case, that was particularly true. _

_ As a gardener, Seonghwa knew, if anything, that just like life has its seasons, it also has its reasons. _

_ So he did what he knew was best doing: he waited for the winter of his life to go by, faithfully believing that spring would have come for his wounded heart, too. _

_ Nonetheless, when the season of heartbreak and bleeding was finally coming to an end, when a sapling of hope begun to timidly peak from the ruins of his heart, though, he experienced, once more, the unpredictability of nature, as it came to his knowledge that his former loved one had died. Murdered. _

_ And like most wicked people, he dragged Seonghwa to hell with him, for the rumours started to spread, as it does commonly happen in most of the small towns, that he had some kind of involvement with the tragic happenstance. _

_ Rumours endorsed by the fact that, admittedly, Seonghwa had been seen by many witnesses leaving the town, on the alleged day when the murder had happened, so when the police came to question him, Seonghwa seemed, to their eyes, as the perfect culprit. _

_ Almost too perfect. _

_ Once again, Seonghwa was brought back to an endless emotional permafrost, from which he begun to question the chance of ever being able to escape, even after the accusations were dropped for a providential lack of evidence and the -allegedly- widely divergent timelines. _

_ Seonghwa was declared innocent by the authorities, yet he never felt safe anymore. _

_ When he finally came back to his home, he had been changed for good. _

_ The constant sense of underlying fear, the anxiety of being a cornered animal, the weight of judgment and mistrust in people’s eyes, the hushed murmurs he got at every step that he took, the impossibility of redemption crushed him with the final blow he was able to take. _

_ If, on one side, most of the people turned away from him and firmly believed he was guilty, on the other hand a consistent portion of the population started to look at him like an exotic beast in his cage. _

_ They roamed around his house, tried to sneak in his garden and to peak inside from his windows, ever so curious to study the habits of the “murderer”, desperate for the thinnest piece of information that would keep the whole town gossiping for weeks. _

_ Soon enough, Seonghwa couldn’t take it anymore. _

_ He ceased to leave his house. _

_ He ceased to attempt to conquest the slightest bit of normality. _

_ He ceased to try to be back to the person he used to be.  _

_ It was long gone, anyway. _

_ Everything was lost, including himself. _

_ So, he turned to the only living thing he was left with: his flowers. _

_ Seonghwa knew that life had its seasons and its reasons. _

_ He had just forgotten to believe that this concept applied to his life, as well as anyone else’s, even though he was bound to be reminded when, out of the blue, an event shook the entire town and directed the general curiosity towards something else. _

_ Someone else, to be precise. _

_ In spite of his distance from the rest of the world and the immersive shroud of silence he had enveloped himself with, Seonghwa still heard about the news, and rumour had it that a famous writer had moved to their small town from the Capital, to everyone’s excitement. _

_ Well, everyone’s, except his own. _

_ Seonghwa had developed an absolutely undefyable wariness, and he was definitely not keen on making friends with anyone, even more so with someone who had surely come to their town loaded with prejudices and preconceptions circa the way life was led there and to whom all of them probably appeared like some kind of caricatures, some caricatural personages, towards whom he might have been attracted in the likes of a puppet show. _

_ And Seonghwa had had enough of being in the spotlight of nosy individuals who were only driven towards him by their twisted curiosity, with the only purpose to dissect his life under the public eye and to push on him their personal narrative. _

_ So, when the ever so talked about author came to his front door, all smiles and fancy clothes that probably reflected the projection of the concept of “country fashion” projected by Vogue Man or some other sort of gibberish magazine, Seonghwa limited himself to greet him with a deep, unsettling, judgmental stare, hoping that it would have been enough to convey the message. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. _

* * *

“Good morning, sir, sorry to disturb you. My name is Kim Hongjoong and I have just moved here a few days ago. I came to introduce myself and to say that I hope I will manage to be a good neighbour… Here, I brought a pie, which I didn’t bake myself since i cannot cook for dear life, but I still hope that you will be kind enough to appreciate the thought…” The fancy man said, handing Seonghwa a pastel yellow square box.

Seonghwa took a deep breath and stood there for a few seconds, carefully studying the writer. He knew the bakery where he had gotten that pie from, there was only one in the whole town, and hesitantly accepted the present with a scoff, proposing himself to either throw it away or use it as fertilizer. That baker was one of the largest mouthed bitches he had ever had to deal with, and even though, he had to admit, the thought had been  _ almost lovely _ , Seonghwa wouldn’t have put anything coming from that shop in his mouth, not even if he was forced to otherwise starve to death.

“Thanks.” He said, his voice sharp as a knife “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“Wait!” The cheerful voice of the writer called at Seonghwa’s back and he felt a pull at his blazer’s sleeve, as he was already trying to escape the definitely unwelcomed visit “You didn’t even tell me your name!”

Seonghwa turned around, a fire in his eyes burning uncontrollably and relentlessly, on the verge of a rage that was about to break his usual composure. 

“I didn’t tell you my name, you say. Well, Kim Hongjoong, I am not going to knock on your door asking for sugar, I won’t greet you a merry Christmas and, for sure, you will not be seeing me around, so I am fairly sure that knowing who I am will be of no use or interest whatsoever for you. I didn’t tell you my name. You’re right. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

Seonghwa said, as bitter and cold as he could possibly be, before finally getting back into his house and slamming the door to the face of the unfortunate, incredulous writer.


	2. Mémoire #1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In that moment, as he was crying on the lake’s bank, embraced by the sunset, lost in a landscape of pure nature to which he didn’t feel like he belonged, Hongjoong finally felt like himself.  
> No more must be, must do, must go.  
> No more roles to embody.  
> No more masks to wear.  
> He was not the best selling author, the literary sensation, the young phenomenon, the genius of narrative and all those other bullshit epithets journalists kept calling him.  
> Without the constant voices of the reporters, of his manager, of his editor, of the lackeys he encountered every here and there, of the fans at promotional events, of his family, of the few people he ever tried to date, what was left of him?  
> Who was he, truthfully, now that he was far away from all the people who decided his identity for him, who put labels on him, who speculated on his personality, who fabricated his public identity, who kept on shaping and editing him, just like one of his novels?  
> Once he found himself without the mask he had to wear, without the armor that had been built on him to protect him from the world, he was just himself.  
> A young man crying in front of a sunset in the middle of nowhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my darlings!
> 
> Thank you for looking forward for this first chapter, which will leave His Highness The Supreme Edgelord Seonghwa out of the picture, in order to revolve around Hongjoong's point of view and give you a tiny bite of his perspective and his past...  
> As you can see, I like my boys how I liked my music back when I was 14: edgy and emo.  
> ALSO!!!  
> You're in for a surprise since the Emo Boi is joined by two (self invited) special guests!
> 
> Please enjoy and, as always, if you do leave a comment or kudos in order to make mesmile and feel less of a loser for being stuck at home in the middle of August writing about the adventures of these two adorable babies <3 and remember that you can find me on Twitter at @renaissanie <3

The sight of the sun setting on the lake took Hongjoong’s breath away and gave him a break from the bitterness that was still lingering somewhere in his mind, after the anything but pleasant encounter with that weird, rude man.

Well, not like he was calling him weird or rude in his mind.

His experience as a writer had taught him long ago that, for the love of truthfulness, the best way to call things was by their name, and the man he had just visited was not just _rude_ , he was not just _weird_ : he was, as a matter of fact, the textbook embodiment of what he would have defined, with the agreement of most people, he was sure, an _asshole_ , through and through.

He shrugged his shoulders, trying to shake off the unpleasant feeling of unprovoked rejection, and stood on the pebbly path that led to his newly purchased house, hypnotized by the golden light of the sun reflecting in dimmer streaks on the ever so slightly ruffled surface of the lake, until his heartbeat got calmer and the rage in his mind dissolved, in favor of a -much needed- sense of peace.

He took a couple steps on the grass and sat down on the bank, breathing deeply.

He squinted his eyes, noticing how some silent tears had slipped away from the grip of his lashes and were rolling down along his pale cheeks, while the golden rays of sun shone on his irises, making them look like pools of wild honey in the fiery sunset light.

Hongjoong didn’t know why he was crying.

He didn’t shed a tear the night of the party.

He didn’t shed a tear when he left the city.

He didn’t shed a tear on his first, lonesome nights in that new house, that was so unsettlingly quiet and unfamiliar. 

So why would he had been crying now, in front of such a beautiful landscape, when his heart had been finally feeling at peace for the very first time in the span of months?

And maybe it was right because of _that_ : because of that peace, because of that inner breath his soul had taken, because of that internal emptiness, which didn’t feel like a void, but rather like a much needed pause of silence.

Because, after the longest time, Hongjoong had given his heart a break, without even knowing, without waiting for it, without planning it, just by letting it happen.

Just by allowing the sun to warm up his heart and shine its poignant light on a world that, all of a sudden, overwhelmed him with a blinding beauty that removed anything else from his mind.

In that moment, as he was crying on the lake’s bank, embraced by the sunset, lost in a landscape of pure nature to which he didn’t feel like he belonged, Hongjoong finally felt like himself.

No more must be, must do, must go.

No more roles to embody.

No more masks to wear.

He was not the best selling author, the literary sensation, the young phenomenon, the genius of narrative and all those other bullshit epithets journalists kept calling him.

Without the constant voices of the reporters, of his manager, of his editor, of the lackeys he encountered every here and there, of the fans at promotional events, of his family, of the few people he ever tried to date, what was left of him?

Who was he, truthfully, now that he was far away from all the people who decided his identity for him, who put labels on him, who speculated on his personality, who fabricated his public identity, who kept on shaping and editing him, just like one of his novels?

Once he found himself without the mask he had to wear, without the armor that had been built on him to protect him from the world, he was just himself.

A young man crying in front of a sunset in the middle of nowhere.

_Kim Hongjoong_.

He heard his voice say his name, in his mind, once more, with the same hesitant tone with which he had introduced himself to the stranger, almost as if he were scared to say it.

To call himself by his own name.

The fearful way with which he said it made him reflect upon an unsettling thought that itched in his mind like a splinter: under all the layers of his persona, Hongjoong didn’t know who he was, and only when he allowed his mind to finally dwell on that piercing thought Hongjoong understood that he hadn’t felt disappointed for having been rejected.

He felt disappointed and angered for feeling weak in front of a stranger, who somehow read him like a book at the very first sight and spinned him however he wanted to, to make him feel intimidated and pushing him away just by prying on that glint of insecurity he had given away.

And even more deeply, Hongjoong was furious at himself because, in that brief, personal clash he had had with the stranger, he had recognised in him a sense of self awareness and of profound identitary strength that he, instead, lacked.

Hongjoong felt dared, defeated and rejected at the same time, and now that he had a glimpse of clarity to sort out his emotions, what took over him was shame.

Shame for believing he was entitled to be welcomed just because of who he thought he was.

Shame for his anger. Shame for his disappointment. Shame for himself.

After all, how could he have expected to be welcomed by someone who had never seen or heard of him in his life?

Yes, he might have been rude, but what Hongjoong felt stinging him the most was the fact that the stranger didn’t know who he was and was not impressed at all by him, differently from the other people in the village.

What hurt the most was seeing a pattern he had been used to all of his life not repeating itself and being shattered in front of his eyes, because that made him acknowledge that, besides “Kim Hongjoong, _best selling author, literary sensation, young phenomenon, genius of narrative_ ”, he himself didn’t know who he really was, deep inside.

And as that man saw right through him, Hongjoong knew that any external persona he could had confidently pulled off with anyone else wouldn’t have stood a chance in front of those deep, inquisitory, merciless eyes.

He was nothing more than a young man crying crying in front of a sunset in the middle of nowhere.

But nonetheless, Hongjoong thought, maybe that was enough of a blank page for him to start writing down _his own_ story.

When the sun started to disappear behind the silhouettes of the trees, Hongjoong eventually felt ready to head back home. He stood up and, slowly, got back on track on the pebbly path, losing himself in the hypnotizing sound of his feet on the cobblestones.

When he arrived to his front door, he turned around one last time, to offer to the setting sun one last, nostalgic smile.

The house he had bought was definitely not a mansion and diametrically opposed to anything he was used to in the Capital. 

It had none of the comforts of his loft and the furniture was still quite essential and frugal, though it couldn’t have been defined lacking or unpleasant.

Hongjoong got himself a glass of water before he realised that his fridge was, as a matter of fact, empty. He had completely lost not only the sense of time, but also his mental to-do list, and now he was left with no food and no idea of what to eat or where to go for dinner.

Of course, if he had been in the city, that would have been the last of his problems: he could have ordered any kind of food and have it delivered in less than 30 minutes to his loft, satisfied or money back, but where he was now he would’ve been lucky to find an inn or a pub, with questionable sanitary conditions at best, serving the dish of the day and a pint.

As he headed upstairs to, at least, have a warm bath, Hongjoong sighed while he waited a definitely excessive amount of time for the water to heaten up to a decent temperature, contemplating in his mind how inconsiderate he had been to make such an impactful decision in the spot.

When, eventually, the bathtub got filled up enough, he undressed himself, leaving his clothes messily on the floor, and slipped inside, taking a deep breath as the water embraced his body and lulled him into a state of intense relaxation.

Everything had happened so fast and he never truly got a break to realize the course of events that led him there.

Hongjoong had never been one to act on impulse.

He was, rather, a meticulous planner, someone who needed to have everything under control to feel safe and at ease, surely led by emotions, but always leaving the last word on relevant decisions to his rational side, therefore finding himself in a whirlwind of sudden events and decisions taken out of emotion was definitely not his piece of cake.

Not like he had had any choice, as his editor had reminded him time and time again while they were discussing on which one would have been the best course of actions for him, after the critical events in which he had found himself being involved.

Hongjoong had always loved the city life: the constant motion, the sleepless nights, the sense of dynamism, the endless sources of inspiration for his works, but then, when it came to loving him back, the Capital didn’t prove itself to be so kind.

While his eyes wandered around the bathroom, without really focusing on anything, his gaze lost while looking at the floor tiles, a series of confused memories flashed in his mind.

Just like many other unaware innocents before him, Hongjoong had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, more specifically at his editor’s house during a party.

People who have actually been at parties in their life do not need to be informed on the thousand and one ways in which a party could go utterly wrong, but that one in particular did not just have a couple of unfortunate accidents.

That one was a catastrophe.

For a moment, Hongjoong thought he was still there, in that untamable chaos, through the screams and the cries and people stepping over him and running around and panicking, blood still dripping from his hands and soaking his clothes while his editor and mentor, Eden, pulled him away from the crowd and dragged him on the floor all the way to his Jacuzzi, throwing him inside with his clothes still on.

He remembered Eden’s hands cupping his face and wiping away his tears, while he whispered that everything would have been alright, that he would have made it right.

He remembered how the water became red, while his skin kept turning paler and violent tremors kept shaking his body.

The water was searing hot, but he had never felt so cold.

He remembered passing out with the vision of that corpse imprinted in his mind.

Hongjoong had been seeing that scene ever since.

Every time he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, he was tormented by those glassy eyes, by that desperate gaze, by that twisted expression of crystallized terror, no matter how many or what kind of meds he took, no matter the psychotherapy sessions, the hypnosis, the meditation, the olistic therapies, the New Age bullshit and the medical prescriptions.

It was still there.

Probably would have forever been.

A loud ringing of his front door bell shook Hongjoong from his daydreaming, which, to be completely frank, he would have rather called “daynightmaring” and called for his attention downstairs.

Almost tripping on the wet tiles, he got out of the tub in a jolt, put on a bathrobe that was clearly way too big for him, and quickly went downstairs, barefooted.

While he was on his way, rubbing his head with a towel and trying to stay as warm as he could in the huge bathrobe, Hongjoong cursed under his breath, quite irritated.

“Why the fuck would someone ring at my door at almost dinner time, uninvited and unannounced, without even questioning whether I would or wouldn’t be at home…” He mumbled to himself, groggily. 

When he opened up the door, though, most of his sulking disappeared at the sight of two young men, looking like polar opposites and carrying what looked like a couple of quite heavy cloth bags in their hands. One had his face framed by long, ash blonde locks, his skin looked slightly suntanned and sharp features that gave him quite a charming appearance; while the other man had sleek, glossy, raven black hair and a porcelain skin constellated here and there by graceful freckles.

“Good evening! We saw you coming back home late, before, and since we noticed that you hadn’t done any grocery shopping in the village, today, we thought you might have been hungry.” Said the blonde guy, with his deep, yet somehow joyous, youthful voice, stumbling in a couple words as he spoke with a hint of a stutter.

“Oh...You...You saw me, yes, sure, of course you… saw me…” Hongjoong babbled, quite confused at how checking on each other, not to say prying in other people’s business, must have had been quite a regular neighbourliness practice.

A practice he was not aware of until that point, anyway.

“So we thought that you might have appreciated if we had made dinner for you!” Chimed in the other man with a sweet smile, dimples in full display, as he took a step forward as to enter inside.

“Please,” Hongjoong said, taken aback by the initiative and making way to his kitchen with no little unsettlement, but at the same time feeling extremely rude for that voice in his brain that wanted them out “Make yourself at home… I’m sorry for the untidiness, but you know how relocations are…”

“Well, as a matter of fact, no,” The blonde one said, placing the bags he and the other guy brought on the wooden table “We have lived here our whole life, the closest thing to a relocation we have experienced was when San moved to my cottage, five years ago.”

“I’m San, by the way.” The black haired one added and then pointed to the other man “And he’s Mingi, my fiancé. we have been together for…” 

Hongjoong noticed how San was trying to count the years in his mind, before he got cut off by a loud kiss from Mingi.

“...For forever!” Mingi added, and the two had probably almost forgotten about his presence, by then, because Hongjoong clearly noticed how they got lost in each other’s eyes and softly giggled at once.

“Anyway, don’t worry about the mess, we’ll clean up while you get dressed.” Said San, and in the fraction of a second he was already busy taking out dishes and glasses and cutlery from the cardboard boxes scattered everywhere and washing them at an impressive speed, while Mingi picked up any kind of trash and begun to clean up all the balled up newspapers and the empty boxes to throw them into a large trash pack.

“You… You will what?” Hongjoong muttered, incredulous and quite confused by the unforeseen course of events he had found himself being dragged into.

A social dinner was definitely not part of his plans, but then again, how could he have said no when the two of them had been kind enough to not only cook for him, but also to clean up his kitchen and properly arrange it for him? He had to comply.

And something, in the back of his mind, told him that he would have had to get used to that kind of things happening more and more often than he would have known.

“We’ll clean up for you. No worries, we’ll do it gladly, so that we can all eat together afterwards. Come on! The soup will get cold!” Mingi’s voice shook him from his reflections.

“It’s made with vegetables from our own orchard, you’ll love it!” San added, as if the food they brought needed any further recommendations, other than the delicious perfume coming from the bags, to make Hongjoong’s mouth water and his stomach growl with anticipation.

Hongjoong smiled to both of the men and nodded in agreement, partially defeated, partially happy for that surprise.

Then, he headed to his bedroom, upstairs, and picked up some clean clothes from his wardrobe.

Strangely enough, they had picked up the smell of the wardrobe’s wood and gloss right away, while he couldn’t detect anymore the familiar fragrance of the fabric softener he used to put in his laundry back in the city.

Things were really changed, Hongjoong thought.

Now it was time for him to catch up.


End file.
